


Crown the queen

by fightingtheblankpage



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Banshee Lydia Martin, Dubious Consent (not graphic), F/F, Gen, Mild Gore, Mythology - Freeform, Norwegian Mythology & Folklore, Post Hale Fire, Wild Hunt, all dogs go to heaven - so where do werewolves go?, characters experience what can be understood as hallucinations, hale angst like you don't even know, it's all rather miserable as per usual, mix and match mythology, non linear concept of time i'm afraid, some liberties were taken with wild hunt lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 18:58:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1008890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fightingtheblankpage/pseuds/fightingtheblankpage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story in three acts and six years, concerning the death of Laura Hale and the afterlife of Lydia Martin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In-between.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lizleminem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizleminem/gifts).



> Dedicated to the wonder that is the Lydia/Laura fandom, with a special shout out to [Christa](http://www.hoechuspocus.tumblr.com). Of course I look out for you.  
> Beta work, as always, by Elizabeth. Thank you!

_In-between._

They’re running away, which isn’t a safe thing for a werewolf to do at all.

Laura can’t be sure if there’s anything to run away from, which makes it even worse. Without a den to go back to, they’re wandering for the sake of wandering, not even getting further away from Beacon Hills anymore, just not staying put.

In their last flat, one they rented for a month and stayed in for a week, Laura would forgo sleep for days, pacing around the only bedroom, her own anxiousness echoed in the dark circles under Derek’s eyes. In the motel before that, she had nightmares about swift shadows chasing them across empty highways. Even before that, she made Derek stay in the car for four days while she was driving listlessly. When he tried to ask, Laura didn’t have an answer for him – so she snapped her teeth and flashed red eyes, and they drove.

Laura hasn’t caught the scent of wolfsbane since Beacon Hills, and even the smell of smoke is phantom and not really clinging to her hair, clothes, skin. Still, she feels hunted,  and through the bond between them, the cabin syndrome of a too-small pack, Derek is skittish, too, throwing glances over his shoulder, tracking other cars passing them on the road with blank eyes.

The more Laura and Derek run, the more they want to run. Laura’s heard this story once before, but she was very young, and it seemed unimportant. When she was a child, she believed it, and every word of warning about wolves who give in to the call of the chase rang true from her mother’s lips. But Laura outgrew stories, and before she grew up enough to understand that they’re true after all, there was no one left to tell them.

She doesn’t want to stop for the night, but the inside of the car is starting to stink of the acrid sweat of fear; Laura reasons with herself that that is what’s making her wide-eyed and white-knuckled, the feedback loop of fear between Derek and her.

“Tell me when you spot a motel,” Laura says, and Derek relaxes beside her, adds relief to the jumble of emotions hanging between them. Laura feels better for that, too. Laura feels guilty for making him afraid in the first place.

It gets easier to breathe, for a while. They have a purpose, albeit a short-term one, and they can pretend the motel is a step in a longer trip Laura has planned out, not the only point on the map other than a highway. Derek even musters a smile, says, “They take their creepy décor seriously, huh.” It’s too loud in the reception office, between a rack of yellowed postcards and a stuffed animal head.

In the bathroom of their shared room, Laura stares in the mirror, turns her eyes red, hazel, red, hazel, and pretends she doesn’t see the shapes slithering at the edge of her vision, growing, moving lazily across the mirror’s surface. She knows they won’t be there if she turns around.

***

They spend two nights in the motel, living off of what they can get out of the vending machine. It’s not the longest they’ve stayed in one place since Beacon Hills, but it’s the longest Laura can force herself to stay put  this time – a sort of olive branch, from Laura to Derek. After the motel they take turns driving, Laura giving excessive pointers to Derek even though he’s sixteen and Peter’s already taught him how to drive. Derek argues back, without venom, but he says more than he has in weeks. They try to chase away the silence, and for a while, it works.

Laura starts sleeping again, not whole nights, but half an hour here or there. She lets herself doze off while Derek’s behind the wheel, lulled by the sound of skin sliding over the steering wheel, the hum of Derek’s body, the strong thrum of his blood. They’re good noises, alive noises, and Laura doesn’t even particularly regret  having ripped out the radio when Derek had tried to turn it on, right after they left town.

On the edge of sleep, with her hand tucked between her cheek and the window, Laura slips in and out of consciousness. She dreams, or she remembers, the barrier is precariously thin in her exhausted state. In Laura’s mind, Talia tells her that words carry enough weight to reshape reality, and as for wolves who run amok‒

“Laura,” Derek says, so soft that for a moment Laura’s not sure it isn’t a part of her dream. “Can you see them, too?”

And because words can make unreal things real, and invite the things skirting the edge of reality inside it, Laura _can_ see them. They’re the shadows from the bathroom mirror. They’re swift shapes, running alongside the car, catching up to it with ease and then slowing down on purpose, only to resume the chase.

It appears playful, like something a pack may engage in on the full moon. But the creatures around the car, though animalistic in nature, are not wolves, and the pull of the moon is at its weakest today. Laura’s untethered, drifting, so the call of the chase resonates through her bones in the spaces the moon should occupy.

“Don’t look,” she says, and then, fast and feverish, “Pull over.”

When Laura takes her eyes off the window, Derek’s pale and sickly beside her, looking not at all like Laura feels. The apparitions make her want to crawl out of his skin, to tear at her own flesh to set free what’s underneath.

They make her want to run.

The car slows down and rolls to a stop, Derek reluctant but unable to disobey Laura, and she’s already tearing the door open, getting out, gulping in air like she’s been choking inside the Camaro’s metal body.

The change curves Laura’s spine into a bow, comes unbidden and unexpected, still new. The alpha form turns her bones into branches that grow inside her, spins her veins into new patterns: makes a monster out of a girl.

Laura doesn’t look back to see if Derek’s following her. The extra sense labelled Pack in her mind, always providing input, is now quiet and pushed to the back of Laura’s head. All of Laura’s being, including the uncharted territories belonging solely to the alpha in her, is focused on the overpowering thrill of the hunt.

The shadows lead the way, and Laura follows them into the woods, crashing through the trees, not caring that the forest has no right to be so dark and so old. Laura can hear her own paws on the ground, and an answering set of them somewhere behind her: Derek. She’s leaving him behind, though, her strong legs carrying her faster – her body filled with power he doesn’t know. As she runs, the shapes keep close to her, flanking her sides. It gives the illusion that Laura’s leading the hunt, but no, somewhere far ahead of them she can sense another not-quite-animal, something darker and stronger than even her.

She’s not afraid. There’s no fear now that she’s joined the Wild Hunt. There’s the ecstasy of the chase, the pleasure of her paws pushing the ground away, the fresh forest air on her muzzle, better than any smell she’s ever known. The hunt steals away the smell of smoke, the heaviness of responsibility crushing Laura’s young shoulders, even the weariness from her red-rimmed eyes. Laura’s never felt so free.

If she were in her human form, she’d laugh, but as a wolf, she can only yelp and loll out her tongue, trying to find a way to let out some of the happiness bubbling inside her. The shadows accompanying her, Laura realises, aren’t shadows at all – they’re wolves, too, beautiful beasts with swift bodies and bright eyes. Not slowing down at all, light and graceful on their feet, the wolves throw back their heads and howl, and Laura howls with them. It’s not a song of grief, like the one Derek and she shared in front of their lost house. It’s a call, to someone or something Laura doesn’t know, but suddenly desperately wants to see.

As soon as the first note of yearning enters her howl, the wolves around her voice their reassurance, and Laura can go back to the blessed state of not worrying at all. She’ll see _her_ soon enough; and though Laura doesn’t know who _she_ is, it fills her with relief.

They run and they run, and the forest turns darker, but nothing blocks their path. The trees Laura leaves behind are getting taller and taller, reaching towards the sky like pillars, until they are just that – dark pillars supporting a ceiling of green. The wolves slow down into a lazy trot, as if sensing that their den is near, and so does, Laura, the sense of urgency abandoning her, leaving her with calm gratitude that she gets to be here. As they trot turns into a walk, Laura senses Derek right behind her, catching up after the mad dash. In his nearly-human form, he appears alien and odd to Laura.

Derek’s saying something, and Laura strains to understand his speech, but her ears are still ringing with howls. Shifting back is uncomfortable for Laura; she fits awkwardly into her own body.

“Where are we?” Derek asks as soon as fur recedes from Laura’s skin. To Laura’s confusion, he sounds more uncertain than awed. “Do you know this pack?”

“No,” Laura says. The spell is wearing off, leaving Laura uneasy, the traces of the Wild Hunt’s magic colliding with the natural magic of all werewolves. “I don’t think it’s a real pack at all.”

And Derek understands before Laura does, because his face turns pale, his eyes glowing their eerie blue. Laura steps closer to him, ready to protect, but the wolves pay them no mind anymore. They circle the trees, and then, one after another, slip away, out of sight. In Talia’s stories, the way to go was always forward, so Laura follows them, her fingers circled around Derek’s wrist like a brand.

Laura doesn’t think it’s a real _forest_ at all. She steps between the trees and into a circular clearing surrounded by pillar-trees that appear grey more than brown. The clearing is aglow with wisps of green light crowding at their feet like fireflies.

In the centre of the clearing, there is a chair or a throne. It seems to change in front of Laura’s eyes: sometimes it’s another tree, shaped by nature to resemble a seat; other times it’s made of stone-grey skulls pilled together. The wolves brush their sides against the chair, curl at its feet as if to sleep, but their eyes keep watching Laura and Derek.

The chair is empty, and then it’s not. It’s the sort of obvious, inhuman magic that makes a growl rip its way out of Laura’s throat, even in her human body. The girl sitting on the chair smiles. For a moment Laura thinks her lips are red with blood, but it’s lipstick – somehow the stranger of the two possibilities. The girl’s hair is the colour of dried blood, too, or maybe rust. Her fingers drum against the armrest, once.

“You were supposed to only bring the alpha,” the girl says. The wolves’ ears twitch, but none of them moves to get up. “Fine,” the girl says, as if she’s received an answer, one Laura couldn’t hear. Her eyes, when she turns them on Laura, mimic St Elmo’s fires in their colour. “Let’s step into the next room for some privacy.”

Laura feels a brief tug in her gut, curiously similar to that experienced during an elevator ride. They don’t move at all, or at least they don’t appear to have moved – the clearing remains the same, but the wolves and Derek are gone.

“Where’s my brother?” Laura asks. The link to her only pack member is still present, but muffled. Something’s wrong. “What did you do to him?”

“He’ll be fine,” the girl says breezily. “The Hunt won’t hurt him. They didn’t come for him.”

“Did they come for me?” Laura asks. The old stories are coming back to her, half-remembered and jumbled together. She joined the Wild Hunt, she ran with them, she answered the call. Wolves in Talia’s stories always, always got stolen away by the leader of the Hunt when they did.

The Lady of the Game purses her lips. “Not yet,” she says. “You’re still alive, aren’t you. I have no use for living people, they wouldn’t keep up with the Hunt. Sometimes I allow them to follow for a while, until they die of exhaustion. Only when I like them, though,” she smiles, her lips curling into something lethal-sweet. The Lady of the Game wears the pelt of a white wolf around the delicate curve of her shoulders. She’s small, girlish against the massive chair – the pelt covers her almost completely. Underneath it, though, Laura can see clothes she'd expect to see on women in glossy magazines. The Lady is drilling a hole in the ground with the heel of a red-soled pump.

Laura would like to see what she's really facing, what's hiding underneath the borrowed face. At the same time, just the glow of the underworld in the Lady's eyes is too much, making the hair at the back of Laura's neck stand up.

She's about to ask the Lady what she wants from Laura, but a different question comes unbidden.

“Whose body is this? Did you steal it?”

“It's mine,” the Lady says, which is an answer, but then again, isn't. The Lady flicks a ginger curl with her fingers, examines it with faux-interest. “It hasn't always been mine, or maybe the other way around, but sometime in the future, it is. And when it's not here, it's called Lydia Martin,” she adds in a tone of someone making a great exception for the first time in their life. “It's interesting, actually. Not that I expect you to appreciate it, but I always am the person most suited to getting through to you. We'd need more time than your life entails to explain this properly, so for now, just know that my kind never lies. Lies are the specialty of the living.”

“I don't know anybody called Lydia Martin,” Laura says, feeling she's getting off topic, and not exactly caring. “I think there used to be Martins in Beacon Hills, but.” She shrugs, and Lydia rolls her eyes.

“As I said, I didn't expect you to get it. But if instead of going like this,” she waves her finger around in the air; her fingernails are pink, “your life went like this,” she draws a straight line in the air, “Lydia Martin would be the person whom you wanted to see at the very end.”

The mention of the end gets Laura thinking about the beginning of this conversation, paradoxically, and she says, “You said I'm not dying yet.”

Lydia doesn't deign this worthy of an answer. She doesn't strike Laura as someone who repeats themself. “I knew your mother, and before that, I knew your grandmother. In the linear sense of past tense, I mean. As a matter of fact, I've known every Hale alpha since the first day the paws of the Heruli touched the ground where human feet used to be. I took every Hale wolf to join my Hunt.”

“Wait,” Laura says, “does it mean the wolves, back in the clearing‒”

Was one of them my mother, she doesn’t ask. Was one of them my little sister, she doesn’t ask. Are they all running now, free, bound to nothing but the thrill of the hunt, unharmed by the fire, she doesn’t ask.

“We are in the clearing,” Lydia says, “just one room over. And there are innumerable wolves in my Hunt, you'll see.”

"What do you want from me?" Laura demands, frustrated. Her temper has been short since she inherited the alpha power – it's like going through the worst years of puberty again. "If it's not to let me talk to my mom, then why am I even here."

"I promised I would warn you before everything goes like this." Lydia makes a strange gesture, her index fingers joined, and then she separates them in a wide arc, like a beginning of a heart drawing.

"And who did you promise it to?" Laura asks.

Lydia talks almost over her, like she didn't hear Laura, "It's essential that the balance of favours is kept between you and I." Laura doesn't think Lydia means her, but rather some wider 'you,' incomprehensible to Laura. "Right now, the count is higher on your end." She straightens her back, looking at Laura with her head tilted. "I can't for the life of me tell whether you don't follow, or if it's just your default blank expression."

She smiles when she says it, just a little smirk, and Laura doesn't feel insulted, but rather teased by this creature balancing between a girl and something very different. For the first time since hearing the name, she regrets not meeting Lydia Martin. She regrets the fact that her life didn't go in a straight line. She has been thinking about it, of course, night and day; there was very little else to do for her other than to run after the fire. The difference is, now it's a more tangible future she feels robbed of, not just a picture of college and a few more years of not being responsible for anyone, painted in broad strokes.

Something else occurs to Laura, and she starts. "Why didn't you warn us before the fire, then? That's when the pack really needed all the help we could get."

"They're part of the Wild Hunt now," Lydia says, her eyes wide, like she wants to make Laura understand that it's better, somehow, that Laura lost almost everyone she loved, that everything got consumed by flames.

"Are they coming after us again?" Laura asks. She doesn't want to show she's scared, but keeping her face under control isn't enough. Lydia's eyes focus on her as if every thought Laura's ever had is written across her face in a language specifically designed for Lydia's reading pleasure.

Lydia shakes her head, exaggerated: she either dares Laura to understand something Lydia isn't saying, or just really likes seeing her curls bounce around. "You can't go back. It's very important, and the best advice I can possibly give you: don't go back. You know that thing they say, about the only way being forward? Make this your life motto."

"Go back where?" Laura asks. "To Beacon Hills? Why? What's going on there?"

"Laura," Lydia says, very carefully, like it's more than just a name. "I'm going to see you again, and your brother, and your uncle. Some of the above more than once," she adds wryly. "In my future and in my past. The question of when I'm going to see you depends on whether you listen to me or not."

"What are you‒"

"If there's space enough in your head for just this one thing, it can still save your furry ass. Understood?" Laura nods, and when she opens her mouth to speak again, Lydia silences her with a finger in the air. "It's not healthy for the living to stay here for too long, so I'm not going to offer you tea."

She may be joking, or making fun of Laura, but then again, she may be serious about the tea. If Lydia can procure designer shoes in the underworld, Laura reasons, tea shouldn't be beside her. And Laura knows there are bigger things to think about here, but it's too difficult to wrap her mind around all of it just yet, so she starts with the small things.

Lydia gets up from her chair, letting the white pelt slip off her shoulders as she goes. She's shorter than Laura by something like a head, and that's in high heels. She doesn't stumble as she walks across the moss and twigs, just comes to stand before Laura, tilting her chin up to look Laura in the face.

"I'm sort of disappointed there's no way for this to go that ends with us meeting before I come here. I'd like to get to know you the traditional way," she says. When she lowers her lashes and hides the colour of her eyes, she looks soft, human, sad. "But it's okay," she answers herself, crossing her hands over her chest, cocking out a hip. "I'll see you soon enough. Just not _too_ soon, okay? Say you promise."

"I promise," Laura says, and then, because it feels too heavy to be her last word to Lydia, "but won't it count as another favour you owe me?"

Lydia huffs out a laugh, a very snorting, unladylike laugh that she tries to cover up with an exasperated sigh. "We'll work it out. Now go, before I decide to keep you here after all."

She tries to make it sound like a joke, but Laura doesn't think it quite is. She has more questions – thousands of them, probably – but Lydia silences them all with her small hand on the inside of Laura's wrist. The green lights around them dim, and then go out like a light bulb exploding in a last burst of brightness.

***

On the edge of sleep, with her hand tucked between her cheek and the window, Laura slips in and out of consciousness. She dreams, or she remembers, the barrier precariously thin in her exhausted state. In Laura’s mind, Talia tells her that words carry enough weight to reshape reality, and wolves who run amok will only run back into danger. The memory turns dual for a moment, Talia and Lydia, both of them telling Laura stories, both of them like women from childhood stories themselves.

“Our mom used to know a pack in New York,” Laura says, her voice weighted with fatigue.

Beside her, Derek tenses and says nothing. Neither of them has mentioned anybody who died in the fire; they've spoken about Peter only once.

“We could go there,” Laura says, and waits.

They've grown unaccustomed to conversation, and it's stilled, awkward, fits wrong into the space of the car. “Yeah,” Derek says, his voice so small Laura barely recognise hope there.

“We'll be okay,” Laura says, with certainty that feels more like Lydia's than her own. “I promise.”


	2. Life.

_Life._

Officially, there are three packs in New York, and the alphas of two out of them are sisters. In practice, like in most other big city, the strict pack laws are lifted enough to allow for the passage of werewolves coming to study, work, passing through as tourists. Any stay that lasts through a full moon must be made known to one of the three alphas. Other than that, the system is built on mutual understanding that any werewolf incapable of following one simple rule is a dead werewolf.

Laura doesn’t know how many full moons Derek and she will spend in New York. They arrive in the city around noon, welcomed by the full force of noises, smells, a mixture of werewolves, humans, creatures Laura can’t name. She’s never felt like a small town girl, with her mother one of the best known alphas on the continent, maybe in both Americas, but now she thinks maybe she is – maybe she’s not really her mother’s daughter, in a way that counts. Talia is dead, Laura tells herself. Soon enough the Hale name, that key which used to open all the doors, will lose its meaning. At eighteen, Laura doesn’t expect anybody will ever say ‘Laura Hale’ the same way they said ‘Talia Hale’; the same way a spell would be pronounced, reality-changing.

She pays a visit to Nina Cohen on the very next day, leaving Derek to peruse the local newspapers for job ads, flat ads, she’s not really sure. She’s never had to rebuild her life from the bottom. But Derek looks at Laura like he expects her to have a helpful list, somehow passed to her along with the alpha status, and Laura learns that she can either tell Derek the truth or she can put a wall between them, say that she’s the alpha and he’s her beta, and just fake it.

So she fakes it, because she wants a little bit of normalcy, wants a pack more than she wants to be a good big sister. She pays a visit to Nina Cohen, the alpha of one-third of New York, and says she’s Talia Hale’s daughter, and that she’s asking for sanctuary.

Nina Cohen is tall, taller than Talia was, and she has a speck of brown in one eye, but not in the other. “You’re an alpha,” she says, “we don’t traditionally offer sanctuary to alphas, only to betas. Omegas may try to prove themselves and join my pack.”

They’re in Nina’s kitchen, sitting at a round white table. Nina offered Laura coffee or orange juice earlier; now she’s smiling a predatory smile like she’s daring Laura to ask how does one prove oneself to Nina Cohen.

“It’s just me and my brother,” Laura says. She doesn’t have leverage, so she goes for pity. It seems like the alpha power gives some, but takes some, too: asking comes harder to Laura now.

“Shame,” Nina says. She makes an all-encompassing arc with her glass: shame about the Hales, about their house, about what will become of Beacon Hills without a pack there. Shame about the fact that people die, and somebody else has to pick up what they leave behind. Shame about Laura.

Laura nods: it is, but she’s turned it in her head so often, it doesn’t need repeating out loud.

“How old is your brother, then?” Nina asks after a while.

“Sixteen.”

“Still in high school,” Nina says. Derek isn’t; they’ve been wandering the country for months, and Laura’s priority wasn’t making sure they both finish their education. “And how old are you?”

Nina’s eyes are assessing, measuring Laura ruthlessly. “Eighteen,” Laura says. She’s turned eighteen at the beginning of the year, in January. They had two parties: for the pack and for Laura’s school friends. Afterwards, Talia told Laura it’s the last year they do things this way, it’s time for Laura to focus on the pack. Laura tried talking about college again, Talia said she’d think about it, and that these are the important years for the formation of a wolf. Future alpha, she said. She said it many times.

Nina makes a considering noise, tapping a finger against her thin lips. She’s taller than Talia, and older, too. Maybe not as strong, but still stronger than Laura. Talia spoke little about Nina Cohen, just that her older sister is an alpha, and that Nina’s mate was, and now Nina is one in his place.

“I’m sure we’ll be able to come to an agreement,” Nina says. She smiles at Laura, but she narrows her eyes, too – she looks like a fox from a fairy tale, Laura thinks distantly. “In fact,” Nina says, “I can promise you that we will.”

***

Laura and Derek’s first winter in New York is the coldest Laura can remember. The heating in their flat keeps breaking, and finally Derek learns how to fix it himself. There’s no fireplace here they can fall asleep in front of, to wake up the next morning in their own beds, carried there by unknown, caring hands.

Derek goes back to school, Laura doesn’t. They argue about it all through the winter, until two days before Laura’s birthday Derek says, “You keep planning a life for me, but not for yourself. That’s not fair, Laura.”

They don’t talk on Laura’s birthday, passing each other silently in the small kitchen, being extra careful not to touch each other. Derek leaves earlier than usual, and later, when Laura’s in her semi-decent receptionist job Nina Cohen helped her get, the school calls. “He’s home sick,” Laura says. “I’m sorry, I can’t talk now. I’m at work.”

Her work is mostly picking up phones, and telling people whoever they want to contact isn’t in, and neither is their assistant, not today, sorry. She says sorry a lot, the word turns meaningless in her head, sometimes she thinks she’s pronouncing it wrong.

“Oh,” the woman at the other end on the line says. “I hope there’s someone to check up on him, at least.”

“Yes,” Laura says, which isn’t a lie, because she hopes Derek will find someone to make him less alone. Laura can’t, being an alpha isn’t about being a friend to your betas. “Thank you for calling. I really have to go, sorry.” She hangs up, and then another’s phone is ringing, and Laura recites her lines.

It’s true that Laura’s plans are for Derek. An alpha’s main concern is pack, their whole lives revolve around what’s best for the betas. An alpha strives when the pack strives, suffers with them, gains power from their power. Laura’s life was never supposed to be hers. There was a dozen or so of other people she should think about first; now there’s just Derek.

In the afternoon, Laura goes home, to the apartment that has started to smell like pack, but also like cold wind, and the pervading smell of rat poison. On full moons, Laura has to remind Derek not to eat the rats scrambling around the city so he doesn’t get sick.

Laura’s halfway through her microwaveable dinner –she can’t cook, nobody taught her; others cook for the alpha – when Derek comes back. He smells like determination and defiance, teenage smells Laura could barely taste a year or two ago, because they were always surrounding her. He also smells like flames.

It’s far in the range of things Laura can’t begin to describe: the smell of cold or warm. Not particular things getting warmer or being chilled, just the very temperature having a scent. It’s nowhere as persistent as when she’s in her wolf form, but still Laura’s senses are entwined and connected in such a perfect way that most of the time she can’t tell where one is starting and another one ending. She remembers how odd it was when she was a child and other children didn’t understand; she remembers Cora saying, “You smell green today,” and wrinkling her nose.

“Where were you today,” Laura demands.

“You already know I wasn’t at school, so cut the third degree,” Derek says. Then he opens the fridge, peers inside, closes the door with a grimace. He turns to Laura, his arms crossed over his chest, and a part of Laura notes that he’s growing up, _he’s going to be a good wolf for her._

“I don’t even know who you are anymore,” Laura says, to Derek  and to her thoughts.

Derek snorts, ugly and overdone, a boy who’ll turn seventeen this year. “Like you ever cared.”

Laura was the oldest, and the one who was supposed to be so many things. Cora was the youngest, the one they spoilt, the child of the family, Talia’s ‘little girl’. And Derek was the middle child, not ignored as much as left to his own devices, with annoyingly loud friends and a thousand reasons to keep away from the house, taking part in the family life mostly when he was grounded and had no choice. With a guilty twist to her stomach, Laura thinks that apart from the last name and the fire, the only thing she ever had in common with Derek was a shared bathroom.

“I have to care now, don’t I,” she says, bratty like she used to be at Derek’s age. But where Talia pushed right back, suffered no challenge, Derek hunches his shoulders, makes an aborted move that is almost a baring of the throat. It doesn’t quite get there, but Laura doesn’t stop it, either.

“I got a tattoo,” Derek says, and Laura’s brain simply short-circuits for a moment, Laura the Alpha and Laura the Older Sister fighting for who gets to speak their mind first, though both are uniformly displeased.

Finally, Laura settles for a blank, “What.”

“It’s got nothing to do with you,” Derek says, but he turns around, tugs his t-shirt up, bares the line of his spine. The tattoo is black, fresh with the redness of a barely-healed wound around it. Derek pulls the shirt down and turns around, his jaw set. Laura says nothing, but Derek reads an answer he wants to read in her silence. “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

But Laura does, she just doesn’t know how to tell him this without ruining whatever balance they’ve managed to build. She sees the same trifold spiral in the made up patterns of her ceiling when she stares at it at night, and sometimes when she closes her eyes for a moment at work when being contained in the building, in the city, gets to be too much. She carries it tattooed on her insides, she’s sure of it. If someone were to cut her open, they’d find the Hale pack’s symbol carved into the bones.

“Who agreed to do this?” Laura asks instead. “You’re underage.”

“I’m not a kid anymore,” Derek says, and Laura doesn’t want to admit the truth behind that, doesn’t want to say anything else that will put more of that bitter taste on her tongue, so she grabs the keys and walks out, slamming the door behind her.

***

Laura doesn’t even know why she fixates on Derek’s tattoo like that. It has nothing to do with her, he said, and maybe that’s the explanation: Laura should be Derek’s tether to the pack, his anchor. He shouldn’t be searching for it somewhere else, making connections through symbols instead of living people.

It’s easier to get angry, though, and safer than apologizing. Laura fakes it, better than she thought she could; does it so well, in fact, that she gets swept along by her own acting. It’s hard to say who’s the real Laura anymore.

She ends up in Nina Cohen’s kitchen, the place where Nina talks pack business like Laura’s mother did in her home office. Laura can’t be sure, but she thinks she understands Derek in the way she understands herself, in the echoes of herself she sees in him. He didn’t get the tattoo for her, but he made sure to spite Laura along the way.

“There are tattoo parlours on my territory,” Nina says, “but it’s hardly their fault, or my fault for that matter, that you can’t control the only wolf in your pack.”

“I don’t know how to deal with him anymore,” Laura says. “It’d be easier if he weren’t my brother.”

“Yes and no,” Nina says, uncharacteristically charitable. “It’s not your fault that you’re too young.”

Laura doesn’t want to take care of Derek, can’t even comprehend the idea of expanding her pack, dealing with even more people whose every mood swing becomes her own mood swing through the pack connection between them. She wants someone else to take care of her instead, so she says, “It’s my birthday today, actually. I’m turning nineteen.”

“We should celebrate, then,” Nina says smoothly. She checks her wristwatch, dangling on a thin silver bracelet. “It’s almost seven,” she says, like it’s somehow meaningful, and Laura nods just in case. Then, when Nina offers her a drink in the living room, the first room other than the kitchen and the hallway Laura’s seen in Nina’s house, she nods again.

***

It’s not that Laura never thinks about Lydia Martin and the Wild Hunt – but she thinks about them in the same way she thinks about last night’s dream, or the stories Talia used to tell her. Between work, and making sure Derek goes to school, and Nina, she barely has time for the luxury of considering the otherworldly.

Still, it doesn’t mean she’s not curious. In the rare instances when she can afford curiosity, and when looking back doesn’t feel like risking getting sucked into the dark space of the days on the road, Laura wonders. She assumes if Lydia didn’t want her to look into it, she wouldn’t give her any hints.

After the fire, Laura didn’t think anything else was going to catch her interest. She didn’t want things anymore – barely wants anything even now. Even when it came to food and sleep, she required close to nothing. Everything was dull-edged. Any change is by default a change for the better.

So when winter passes, and Laura finds herself thinking about Lydia, she doesn’t push the thought to the back of her head. Instead she stays in front of her computer at work, skipping lunch in favour of eating chips with one hand and typing with the other.

Laura’s never had to stalk anyone online, so she doesn’t know where to start. She knows about tracking, and following a scent, but it obviously won’t work with a semi-mythological creature who apparently is a human at the same time, at least sometimes.

She’s turned Lydia’s words in her head enough times to know most of them had a second or third meaning behind them, and that the things Lydia left unsaid were just as significant. Finally, Laura thinks about the promise Lydia made her make, not to go back. She types in, “Lydia Martin Beacon Hills,” shoves a chip into her mouth.

It turns out Lydia Martin really exists. Laura isn’t sure why she’s surprised – she didn’t think their encounter was a strange dream. If she can trust anything anymore, it’s her own mind. It comes as a comfort, something to look forward to, even if that something isn’t going to happen in her lifetime.

Somewhere out there, in a town Laura will never see again, a girl by the name of Lydia Martin is going to school, winning local spelling competitions, math competitions, any competition she enters, it’d seem.

Laura buries her fingers in her long dark hair, combs it back with a sigh. This Lydia, as opposed to the Lydia Laura met, is eleven years old, and it’s safe to assume she doesn’t have any modicum of control over werewolf afterlife. Even if she does show any promise in that respect, Laura doubts it the school’s website would list it as an extracurricular achievement. With a pang of irrational disappointment, Laura closes out of the search engine.

She tips her head back and turns the bag of chips upside down to get to the crumbs at the bottom. Laura doesn’t know what she expected to find, other than proof of what she already knew to be true. Maybe she hoped that Lydia would find a way to give her another message, some sort of a pointer other than what Laura’s not supposed to do.

Laura would love for someone to tell her what she’s supposed to do. With all the alpha training she got, nobody ever thought to prepare her for being her brother’s sole keeper, and trying to make ends meet with the help of another alpha she can at best hope won’t kill her when push comes to shove.

“Hale.” Mike, Laura’s co-worker, rattles his knuckles on Laura’s desk. He points a finger at the corner of Laura’s computer screen, where the clock is. “Break’s over.”

***

It goes up, and then it goes down, in the traditional way that life always does. And it’s better, Laura thinks, so much better than that first year when it was always the same, not even bad, just miserable, a constant stream of fear and pain that turned her numb. There was no way things could get worse, in that first year, but they sure as hell weren’t getting better, so Laura and Derek stayed in that suspended state.

So it comes as a relief to Laura, almost, when things fall apart again, and they pack up their car. They have only a few more belongings than they did last time, and Laura wonders why they haven’t accumulated more material proof of their new life; if maybe they were unknowingly sabotaging themselves.

“I still don’t get why we had to leave New York,” Derek says. He’s lying, Laura knows  - he knows why, he understands, but he wants to punish Laura by making her say it’s her fault. “I _liked_ New York.” That’s also a lie. He didn’t.

“Nina’s an alpha, and I’m an alpha,” Laura says, purposefully vague. “It couldn’t work out.”

“You didn’t even try to make it work,” Derek says.

Laura uncurls her fingers, and pushes her palms into the steering wheel until her back makes a series of satisfying popping noises. It feels like she doesn’t get to stand straight anymore, and her shoulders hurt from hunching. Every time she does, tries to make herself smaller, the alpha inside her poises to attack, tries to makes itself bigger in the small space between Laura’s sternum and her spine.

“And what do you know about it,” Laura says. She doesn’t say: you’re seventeen, you have no idea how hard it is to make two people fit together when the only thing forcing them together are circumstances and the imbalance of need-want. More importantly, she doesn’t say: as far as I know, the only love story in your life ended in eyes glowing blue. But she thinks it, and it’s harder to take thoughts back than it is to take words. “You’re just supposed to go to school, how hard is that.”

“Yeah,” Derek says. “Yeah, sure, my life is so damn easy. You’re the only one who has it hard.”

“What do you think this was, with Nina?” Laura asks. “No, you know what,” she adds quickly, slips a growl into her voice in case Derek actually responds, “fuck this. I’m the alpha. When I say we go, we go.” Derek doesn’t answer, so Laura presses, “Understood?”

And because he doesn’t have any option other than to obey, Derek says, with his teeth pressed so tight together the word barely makes it out, “Yes.”

“Good,” Laura says. “Great.”

They don’t talk again until Richmond.

***

Derek finishes high school one year late. Laura counts it as a victory verging on a miracle that he’s finished at all, but all she says is, “About time,” before she starts bringing college brochures home.

They’re from community colleges, evening classes, that sort of thing; Laura believes if Derek applied himself he could do a lot better than that, but she doesn’t believe anything can make Derek apply himself. Derek looks at the brochures very much like he looks at Laura these days: angrily.

Derek’s angry all the time these days, when he goes out with his hands hidden in his pockets like he thinks he’s going to punch someone if he takes them out, and when he comes back, no explanation at all, just a sidelong glance at Laura.  And Laura thinks it’s normal, it really could be worse, the fire and what came after could mess up Derek a lot more, but the next full moon they go running with the local pack, and all night long Laura thinks about sinking her teeth into the back of Derek’s neck, just enough to taste blood.

In the morning Laura helps out with breakfast, a big, loud affair the Richmond pack shares after the full moon. She mixes batter in the biggest bowl she’s ever seen, and Steve operates the frying pan, burning every other pancake. Laura’s not sure where Derek is, somewhere in the commotion that is the dining room, maybe, avoiding her.

“You have to cut Derek some slack,” Steve says. He’s the alpha’s oldest son, just like Laura was her alpha’s oldest daughter. He can flip the pancakes in the air, but he still burns every other one.

“More slack?” Laura asks. She thinks the burning may be partially due to the fact that she makes really terrible batter; she still doesn’t know how to cook. “All I’m asking him to do is to go to school.”

“You’re asking him to go to school in the meantime,” Steve explains. He flips the pancake expertly. “Mostly it’s like. You know how people send nonverbal cues? You’re sending a lot of ‘we’re not staying here for long so don’t get attached ‘ cues. Like you’re always waiting for something.”

“I,” Laura says. There are other people in the kitchen, pulling out cutlery and talking, rummaging through the fridge, complaining about the wrong kind of milk someone else bought. Nobody’s paying attention to Laura and Steve, but they’re not paying attention in that concentrated, purposeful way. “I don’t mean to,” Laura says. “It’s not like I was planning to leave New York and come here, but I like it here, and. I’m not planning to leave.”

Steve shrugs, combining the movement with spreading the batter evenly on the pan. “Maybe tell this to Derek,” says Steve.

Laura says nothing. Waiting would imply there’s something in her future, some magic switch that’ll make everything better, or maybe someone to tell her what she’s doing wrong.

She tries to cut off this line of thought, but it’s too late. Here it is, the thing she refuses to admit to out loud, or even in the privacy of her own head. The missing piece that would turn Derek and Laura’s make-believe attempt at an alpha-beta dynamic into an actual pack. Laura’s waiting, despite what she told Steve, and despite all logic – she’s waiting for Peter to wake up.

Peter would know what to do.


	3. Afterlife.

_Afterlife._

It’s not that Laura sits every day on the couch in the apartment she’s sharing with Derek, staring at the phone in her hand, trying to call. Most days, she doesn’t even think about it. There’s work to worry about, and things with Derek may be fractionally better but Derek’s still a full-time job all on his own. On some days Laura even has something approaching personal life, so all in all, weeks can go at a time and Laura doesn’t think about calling the hospital in Beacon Hills even once.

Every few weeks, though, or even every couple months, Laura finds herself imagining what that conversation would go like. In most of her daydreams, when she introduces herself, the person on the other end – the nurse who sends bills sometimes, the bills Laura pays with what’s left of the insurance money  - sounds pleasantly surprised. They say it’s good she called, really, a lucky coincidence, because they have terrific news, and Peter is‒

Laura doesn’t call in case they don’t stick to her made up script and say something else.

***

The restaurant Laura works at barely deserves to be called that. Laura often thinks everything about it is more good intentions than anything else: the décor, the menu consisting of what the owner by the name of Liam thinks is Italian cuisine, even the waitresses’ matching outfits feel fake to Laura. The owner is human, though, and the pay is just above the absolute shit level, but it’s money Laura makes on her own merit, with no help from any other alpha.

The job itself isn’t all that bad, either. The waitresses often get to take leftovers home, which isn’t exactly legal but also isn’t something Liam particularly cares about either way, and the customers all seem to know Liam from somewhere, so they tip well and don’t cause trouble in general. Cathy, who works most shifts with Laura, has a theory about the restaurant being actually a cover up business for Liam’s more illegal activities. Personally, Laura thinks Liam doesn’t have the sort of mind it’d take to come up with a cover up business, but she doesn’t say it, in case it goes back to Liam and he feels insulted.

Apart from an unsound theory, Cathy has a boyfriend with whom she argues a lot over the phone, and a terrible nicotine habit. Every time they get a break, she asks Laura to come with, and then she chain-smokes and yells at her phone for ten minutes. Laura likes her, but she can’t say that to her superior werewolves senses the smell of cigarettes and the yelling equal instant migraine, so she comes up with excuses.

“I can’t,” Laura says. “I have to, um.” She fiddles with her phone, because she took it out of her pocket to check the time a moment ago. “Call someone. Family stuff.”

“Derek’s a big boy,” Cathy says. She brandishes a lighter like it’s an invitation to a secret club Laura doesn’t want to join. “He can live without a call from his big sister once in a while.”

“It’s about,” Laura says, hesitates, realizes she doesn’t have any family stuff other than Derek. Finally she says, “My uncle.”

“Didn’t know you had an uncle,” Cathy says, but she doesn’t push it. She’s already pulling out her own phone, and before the back door closes behind her, Laura hears, “Jake, I told you to‒”

So in the end Laura calls the hospital in Beacon Hills perched on a crate of soda in the backroom of a restaurant, the only reason why she did it being that she didn’t want to listen to her co-worker argue with her boyfriend and to inhale smoke.

“It’s Laura Hale,” Laura says. “I wanted to ask about my uncle. Peter Hale? Nurse, um.”

“Jennifer,” nurse Jennifer supplies swiftly. “It’s good you called, Ms Hale. I was about to contact you myself.”

Laura thinks about her script, and miraculous recoveries, and why not, something good should finally happen, it can’t be all bad all the time in her life. “You were?” Laura asks. Her voice sounds funny when she’s hopeful. Thin, girlish.

“A lot of patients’ families have been worried about the recent animal attacks,” nurse Jennifer says.

Laura hadn’t been, until thirty seconds ago. ‘Animal attacks’ is one of these things her mother always kept and ear out for, along with ‘wild dogs’ and all the other key phrases that ultimately mean ‘we’d say werewolves, if we knew about werewolves’.

Then again, it may just be that Laura’s biased.

“Ah,” Laura says. She waits. Talia taught her that people _want_ to tell her things, she just needs to be patient.

There’s a sound of a door closing at nurse Jennifer’s end, and then her voice, much lower, “The Sheriff says it was a mountain lion. It came right to the hospital’s door.”

“That’s odd,” Laura says. “But he’s fine, right?”

“Yes,” nurse Jennifer says. “The animal didn’t get inside. It just,” she hesitates, “seemed really intent on getting inside.”

There were no traces of other werewolves around the charred remains of the Hale house. All Laura could smell was her family, the criss-crossing trails through the forest they followed almost daily, and pervading all of that a much fresher smell of wolfsbane. Laura assumed they were killed by hunters, it seemed like the only logical explanation, but what if it was an envious pack?

Laura feared whoever killed most of her family would follow Derek and she. But what if they returned to Beacon Hills to get rid of Peter first? Or else, what if they never left?

“Ms Hale?” nurse Jennifer asks. She sounds wavering, uncertain.

“Thank you,” Laura says. “Thanks.”

She hangs up, and stares at her phone for a long time. She promised not to go back, but what’s a promise made to the Lady of the Hunt pitched against the bone-deep bond of the pack? Laura wants to stop waiting and just live, she really does, but she can’t do it with the blood of her pack unavenged, and one of her betas in danger.

She won’t go back, she promises herself. All she’s going to do is pass through Beacon Hills, make sure Peter isn’t in any danger. And if she manages to get her claws on the killers of her family, Laura decides, she’s going to finally be free.

***

“I’m going to check up on Peter,” Laura tells Derek over dinner. “There was some administrative nonsense happening at the hospital, and I have to sign a few things.”

“Okay,” Derek says. He’s hunched over his plate to shorten the road from it to his mouth. Laura remembers when he was so little he could hide behind her. Laura isn’t short, but when they stand next to each other now, she feels like she could disappear inside his broad shoulders without a trace. He’s not so angry anymore, too. It burned out of him, leaving something quiet and sad behind. “Will you be back for the full moon?”

“Yeah, it shouldn’t take too long.” When she comes back, Laura decides, she’s going to tell Derek everything. She’s going to apologize, and tell him she had all those misplaced ideas about what it meant to be an alpha. She may even mention Lydia, and promise to take her GED, and ask Derek, hey, what do _you_ think we should do now?

“Good,” Derek says. He offers her a smile, a rare treat, and Laura smiles back.

He doesn’t offer to go with her, and Laura’s glad. She can’t imagine Derek wants to see Beacon Hills ever again, and he doesn’t want him to feel obliged to go with her in case of some threat that may or may not be there.

Laura packs one bag, firmly stomping down the migratory instinct of the last years telling her to pack up everything, her whole life in Richmond. She’s going to be back, she tells herself. She’ll prove all of them wrong, show them Laura Hale can stop running if she wants to, can stop planning great escapes. She leaves the car to Derek, and enjoys the brief glint in his eyes, the wonderfully normal pleased expression his face takes on at the thought of driving. Laura rents something less conspicuous instead, a nondescript Toyota, and pretends it’s not because she doesn’t want to draw attention.

She leaves Richmond in the early morning, with her head full of plans for when she gets back.

***

Laura knows the Beacon Hills Preserve as if it’s an extension of her childhood house, with rooms made out of clearings and hallways of half-hidden paths. Six years have changed it, but not enough for Laura to not feel like she’s coming home – the trees are taller, the undergrowth thicker, the whole place missing the Hales, who took care of it, but still undisputedly _hers._

She’s not used to feeling fear here. It’s where she’s supposed to feel safe, blanketed by darkness that is always on her side. Instead, she’s felt like a trespasser since she set foot in town. Not a stranger, because how could she feel like a stranger in the place she grew up in – but someone whose space in Beacon Hills has been taken over, like the old forest paths overgrown.

It’s not so strange, perhaps. Laura asked too many questions, impatient and starved for information, growing restless and maybe too aggressive in her pursuit of evidence, hints, anything. The threads were intangible, though, sending Laura off to follow improbable leads.

In hindsight, it all looks like one great distraction, but that’s of course the curse of hindsight, how obvious it seems. But Laura won’t let the trap close around Peter and her. There is confidence coursing through her, white-hot like the feeling of the alpha shift waiting just under her skin: Laura is going to dine on the people responsible for her tragedy, rip them to shreds, and save Peter.

They can’t have him, she thinks as she makes her deliberate way deeper into the woods, they can’t touch anything else that’s hers.

There are many new scents in the preserve, people Laura doesn’t recognise anymore, strangers crossing the borders of the Hale property that Laura could still walk with her eyes closed as if they were paved. Underneath them, though, Laura can catch Peter’s scent; the mixture of pack and nauseating hospital scents sets her on edge. There’s no smell of gun powder, no skin-wolfsbane-metal on her tongue that would mean hunters, and Laura’s eyes turn to red – they’re hiding. It’s not smart, maybe, to go in unprepared, but Laura’s the alpha, she’s been taught that pack is everything, and she can’t let them‒

The _tapetum lucidum_ in her eyes makes everything around Laura seem unreal, painted in greens and turning deeper shadows  hues humans don’t have names for, but Peter silhouette is still recognisable. He's got his back turned to Laura, the line of it vulnerable in his hospital clothes, _wrong_ on an instinctual level that makes Laura pause in her tracks.

“Uncle Peter?” Laura asks. She’s never called him that before, he’s not that much older than she is, but now it seems important: this is her uncle.

And then Peter turns, his eyes alight with bright blue.

Laura doesn’t fight back. Nobody thought to tell her how to use claws and fangs against your own pack.

***

Death, as Laura Hale finds out, feels like waking up after a very disorienting nap taken with your eyes open.

Her hands fly to her neck, and then to her middle, but they come away pale and unbloodied. There’s something stuck to the roof of her mouth, awkward and slick when she runs her tongue over it. Laura reaches in and plucks it out with her fingers.

When she looks down, there’s a single purple petal in her hands, and a body on the ground by her feet. Laura stares at it for a moment, sighs, and steps down decisively. She doesn’t have any trouble recognising the body - it clearly belonged to Laura; she knows it well enough after seeing it daily in mirrors, windows, glass doors. The clean slashes across the body’s throat are dark and unfamiliar, cause Laura’s neck to itch.

As Laura watches, Peter leans over her body, uses his claws to cut it in half. Laura can’t feel it - she plucks another petal out of her mouth with a sense of detachment - but the sight is unsettling in the most base sense of seeing human insides exposed and vulnerable, spilled over grass.

“We’re a little too deep into the woods,” Lydia says thoughtfully. She steps out of empty space, walking carefully in high-heeled boots across soft moss.

“For what?” Laura asks, grateful for a distraction.

Lydia smiles at her. From the corner of her eye, Laura can see Peter picking up half of the body, intestines spilling, Peter starting to walk away. Ignoring this scene pointedly, or somehow completely unaware of it, Lydia says, “To hear Lydia Martin wake up screaming for you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Not yet,” Lydia agrees. “I’ll explain it all to you. It’s one of these moments, you see. Ouroboros biting his tail, and so on, and so forth. Anyway.” She flips her hair over her shoulder, then rests her hands on her hips, narrowing her eyes. “I thought I told you not to come back here.”

“I had to,” Laura says. “I thought‒ I had to.”

Lydia snorts, derisive. Peter walks right past her, bends to pick the other half of the body, leaves again. Laura thinks Lydia may see him after all: a muscle tics in her face, and her back is too tense.

“What happens now?” Laura asks. Lydia rolls her eyes, but doesn’t answer. “I have to talk to Derek,” Laura says. “I have this whole plan. I was going to talk to him, apologize for everything. He’s going to think I didn’t care what happens to him. I was a terrible alpha, but I have a plan. He doesn’t know about Peter. You have to take me to him, Lydia.”

“He’ll have to learn from someone else,” Lydia says.

“He’s a kid,” Laura says. “He’s a stupid kid who got a tattoo because he needed a connection to his family that I couldn’t provide, who skipped school to get me to snap at him. I can’t leave him now.”

Lydia shakes her head, a surprisingly sad look appearing on her face before she turns her head away. Laura thinks she can hear wolves howling somewhere in the woods, distant but getting closer.

“I’m not going to tell you Derek will be fine,” Lydia says. “There are many ways this can go from here. Your family’s story is happening in spirals, repeated patterns existing next to each other, connected by single moments. Your spiral is finished, you have fallen all the way to the center, but Derek’s is still in motion. I know all the paths he can go, but I don’t know which one he will choose in the end.”

“The triquetra,” Laura says, and Lydia shrugs slightly, says, “We’ll see.”

The wolves howl again. The green flames start blinking into existence around them, spreading across the clearing and appearing on the trees like lampions. A single ember catches in the twists of Lydia’s hair, and Laura reaches out to take it out, but in the end doesn’t.

“What can you tell me, then?” Laura asks Lydia’s back.

“I can tell you Derek’s going to follow you here,” Lydia says. “I can tell you there are going to be other stupid kids, maybe even with tattoos, and the kind of hunters your ancestors repeatedly tell me they can’t believe, and other alphas, and other creatures. I can tell you,” Lydia says finally, turning back to Laura with a small but entirely genuine smile, and green light in her eyes, “that I’ve been reliably informed by Talia that this is the kind of story she’d tell you at bedtime.”

“Ah,” Laura says. “Isn’t she disappointed I didn’t listen better?”

“I’m a little disappointed,” Lydia says, almost playful. “But since you’re already here, I’m glad. You’re part of my afterlife too, you know. It goes both ways.”

“Okay,” Laura says. She doesn’t understand a good deal of Lydia’s comments still, but she resigns herself to it for now.

Funny, if she ever tried to guess how she’s going to feel about her death, she’d probably say angry. But all the anger, it feels, has been left behind in her body, useless in the domain of the Lady of the Game. Laura’s lighter without it, and her skin is thin and clear like glass - she could break out of it at any moment, let the wolf out, let it run and chase and howl.

“What do you think happens how?” Lydia asks, and she tilts her head like she’s genuinely curious. She’s lovely, and eerie, and inexplicable. Laura runs the back of her hand over the wolf pelt covering Lydia’s arms, and wonders about the story behind it, and about a thousand other stories.

“We step into the next room,” Laura guesses, “and then we run.”

The Wild Hunt is so close the rhythm of their paws echoes in the rush of Laura’s blood through her veins. They’re coming for her, and this time, Laura won’t fight the call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to, you can read up on the mythology behind the Wild Hunt. Just choose any part of Europe and start from there. I assure you, they all have a version of it. It's great. The Lady of the Hunt is part of the lore in some versions, though not all - but I liked her, and she suits my purposes. Incidentally, the Heruli are also a googlable concept. It's amazing how I don't always make this stuff up as I go, isn't it? 
> 
> This fic used to be 300 words of not-even-a-WIP on my computer for the longest time. Then it was called "mythology medley," and in the meantime it was a big excuse for me to vomit my lore feelings all over the place. Some things stuck, apparently. And as for the current title, it's lifted from a poem by cg aka eminentoutlaw@Tumblr. When in doubt, go poking through your poetry tag is my advice. It can be applied to more than one lady in this fic. Three? Four? I leave this to you. Along with a few other things, to be honest. 
> 
> If you feel like playing in this verse, or just dropping me a question, or possibly crying over Laura Hale, I'm on Tumblr @scottisthealphanow. It's somewhat ironic in relation to this story. Oh well.
> 
> Thank you so, so much for reading! I'm forever grateful, and definitely won't say no to a few words of your opinion.   
> Love,  
> Monika


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